And Now The Parisian Taxi Drivers Are Beating Up Limousines

Taxi drivers stop the traffic on the highway leading to Paris, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013 at Roissy airport. Taxi drivers across France were putting on the brakes to clog traffic, slow access to airports and force would-be passengers to find alternate transport in a strike over government efforts to deregulate the transportation industry.

IF only the French could fight their wars as bravely as they fight against markets, eh?

The latest is that several Parisian taxi drivers have beaten up someone driving an Uber limo: this is even after the French Government just passed a, quite probably illegal, law to favour the taxis over the Uber drivers:

It seems that protest turned to guerrilla warfare this morning as one Uber driver, carrying Eventbrite CTO Renaud Visage & Kat Borlongan from the airport to Paris, was attacked by multiple assailants, who allegedly, after smashing one window and slashing two tires (as seen in the photo), as well as defacing one side of the car with glue, attempted to enter the vehicle. Borlongan says their Uber driver manoeuvered the two out of the situation before anything could happen, leaving the three stranded on the shoulder of the freeway.

Here’s the background: just as in London, in Paris the taxi drivers are the only people who are allowed to pick up a ride anywhere. However, this company, Uber, has a system where you try to book your limo ride on your smartphone. This is increasingly popular as people would obviously prefer to book a cab while they’re finishing their coffee rather than stand out in the rain looking for one.

This also, naturally, pisses off the cab drivers. So, the French Government has just passed a law stating that an Uber driver cannot turn up less than 15 minutes after he has been booked. This is to make sure that people who really have to go, right now, will still use cabs.

If there’s one around of course.

But even after this the Uber driver got attacked this morning. And he did have two passengers in there at the time as well. It’s all going to be rather interesting as these new services roll out, isn’t it?